What your Rookery can send, store and cost
Rookery runs on Cloudflare, and Cloudflare sets a few limits: how much mail goes out in a day, how big an email can be, how much a workspace can hold. For most small teams none of them gets in the way. This page says what they are, what Rookery does when one is reached, and what it costs.
Who deals with it: on hosted Rookery, these limits are ours to watch. On a Rookery you run yourself, they are the limits of your own Cloudflare account, so they are yours. To set one up, see Run Rookery yourself. The numbers are Cloudflare's, read from its documentation on 20 Oct 2026. Cloudflare changes them now and then.
The short version
| Question | The answer |
|---|---|
| How much mail can I send in a day? | A small amount to start, then more as your mail goes out clean. Cloudflare doesn't publish the starting number. |
| Who can I send to? | Anyone, once your domain is set up for sending and your Cloudflare account is on the Workers Paid plan. Before that, only addresses you've verified. |
| How many people on one email? | Up to 50, counting To, Cc and Bcc together. |
| How big can the files on an email be? | 3.5 MB in all, and up to 20 files. |
| How big an email can come in? | Up to 25 MB. |
| How much mail can one workspace keep? | About 300,000 emails in the database, our estimate. Files and original messages are kept separately and don't count toward it. |
| What does it cost to run? | $5 a month for Cloudflare's Workers Paid plan, plus a little more only if you send a lot. |
How much mail can I send?
Cloudflare gives a new account a modest daily sending limit and raises it over time. It looks at how your sending goes: mail that is delivered, rarely bounces and is rarely marked as spam earns more room. Cloudflare doesn't publish the number you start with, and it doesn't say how fast the limit grows.
Two things keep your limit growing:
- Bounces and spam reports stay low. Cloudflare's own targets are fewer than 2 in 100 emails bouncing for good and fewer than 1 in 1,000 marked as spam. A bounce is an email that couldn't be delivered.
- Send mail people expect. Cloudflare's sending service is for one-to-one and automatic mail, like replies, receipts and reminders. It isn't meant for marketing or newsletters.
Need more sooner? Cloudflare has a limit-increase form for it. On a Rookery you run yourself, the owner of the Cloudflare account sends it. On hosted Rookery, we do.
Before your domain is set up for sending, your Cloudflare account can only send to addresses you've verified there. After it is, you can write to anyone.
How big can attachments be?
- Sending: 3.5 MB of files on one email, up to 20 files. Cloudflare allows 5 MiB for a whole email, and files take a third more room on the way out, so the files stay under 3.5 MB to leave room for your words. The writing box says so before it uploads a file that wouldn't fit.
- Receiving: up to 25 MB for the whole email. Mail to your own domain that's bigger is held, and Today says "it's too large to open".
How much can it store?
Your mail lives in three places, each with its own room:
- The database holds the words of your emails, conversations, people and settings. One workspace's database holds 10 GB, which is about 300,000 emails by our estimate. Cloudflare can't raise that limit.
- Files and original messages are kept in Cloudflare's file storage. There's no cap on how much, and you pay by the gigabyte after the first 10 GB a month.
- Live editing, drafts and booking each keep their own small stores, with room for 10 GB apiece. They use far less.
What happens when I hit a limit?
| What you reached | What Rookery does |
|---|---|
| The day's sending limit | The email isn't sent. It shows as Not sent in Outbox, with the reason, and Try again sends it once Cloudflare allows more. It isn't held and sent tomorrow by itself. |
| Too many emails in a short moment | Rookery tries again a few times over a few minutes. |
| Files too big for one email | The writing box says so before it uploads them. |
| An email too big to open | It's held, and Today says so. |
| A trouble opening mail that came in | Rookery tries again for a while, and keeps the original message safe so it can be put through again. |
| An AI helper is rate limited or busy | Rook waits and tries again, then falls back to another model if it can. |
What if I need more room?
Some limits are fixed. Some Cloudflare will raise if you ask. For some, Rookery can add room another way.
| Limit | Fixed, or can it grow? |
|---|---|
| Mail you can send in a day | Cloudflare raises it by itself as your mail goes out clean. You can also ask Cloudflare for more sooner, with its limit-increase form. Adding another database doesn't help, because this limit belongs to the whole Cloudflare account. |
| The size of one email | Fixed, as far as Cloudflare's pages say. They don't list a way to raise it. |
| The database, 10 GB | Fixed. Cloudflare says it can't be raised. Rookery can add room by starting another database and moving a workspace to it. That isn't built yet. |
| Files and original messages | No cap to reach. You pay by the gigabyte past the first 10. |
| AI limits on Cloudflare's models | Cloudflare can raise them if you ask. |
What does it cost to run?
If you run Rookery yourself, you pay Cloudflare directly. On hosted Rookery this is our cost, not yours, and it's here so you can see what's under the hood.
- $5 a month is Cloudflare's Workers Paid plan. It's the base, and it's needed to send mail to anyone.
- Sending: 3,000 emails a month are included. After that it's $0.35 for every 1,000 more. Mail that comes in is free.
- Storage: the first 10 GB of files is free. After that it's $0.015 a gigabyte a month.
- The database and the rest: a small team uses a tiny share of what's included.
- AI that runs on Cloudflare: the first 10,000 "neurons" a day are free (a neuron is Cloudflare's small unit for measuring AI work). After that it's $0.011 for every 1,000.
An example, as an estimate: a team of 5 that sends 200 emails a day sends about 6,000 a month. That's 3,000 past what's included, about $1 more. With the $5 base, it comes to roughly $6 or $7 a month. It's a calculation from Cloudflare's published prices, not a bill: your own numbers will differ, and it leaves out your domain name and any AI you choose to bring from outside Cloudflare, like Claude.
What moves the bill most is how many emails you send and how much AI work Rook does.
Good to know
- The limits that matter most to you, the daily sending limit and storage, are the same on hosted and self-hosted Rookery. Only who looks after them differs.
- An email that doesn't go out isn't lost. It stays in its conversation, and the last day of Just sent in Outbox says why.
- Each domain builds its own name with inbox providers, so a bounce problem on one doesn't spoil another. See Send as your own domain.